


Someone Leads the Beast in on His Chain

by audreycritter



Series: Cor Et Cerebrum [44]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, PTSD flashbacks, it's dev's turn for whump, look it's a medical emergency, no profreading we die like mne, not fixed but less broken; healing, reclaiming platonic affection from the hellpit of toxic masculinity, shitty dads continue to be shitty in memory, some hugs because that's why we do any of this, the author has strong opinions about the restorative power of love and found family, tw cardiac problem briefly feared, tw poisoning, tw vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 04:10:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20147422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/audreycritter/pseuds/audreycritter
Summary: Dev is poisoned and Batman gets there just in time.





	Someone Leads the Beast in on His Chain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lurkinglurkerwholurks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/gifts).

> Title from Mountain Goats' song 1 John 4:16. Warning: Medical trauma and then sappy ending, I make no apologies. Thanks to Matina and jersey and lurker and cerusee for workshopping and cheerleading.

The office was dim until the overhead light flicked on. Kiran Devabhaktuni dragged himself forward, dropped into his desk chair, and then stared across the desk surface. A full shift turned into a last minute emergency surgery meant he was tired. More than tired. The sun was going to be coming up soon. His mobile had only casual messages, and not many of them, so he knew he hadn't missed any Bat emergencies.

He didn't have a surgery scheduled in the morning, but he did have lab work to follow up on, and with a yawn he decided he'd rather catch a few hours of sleep on his office couch than put in the effort to go home to his flat. The post-surgery adrenaline, more a low hum than a roaring rush, still coursed through him enough that he wanted a cup of tea first. The little loo attached to the office wasn't large at all, but it had a sink to fill up the electric tea kettle.

The water heated and he rummaged through a basket in the desk drawer, frowning at the selection. Hardly anything decaf, and low on PG Tips, nothing herbal to speak of. A box at the edge of the white basket caught his eye. It was a sealed tea box, an herbal blend with lemon. It still had the tiny thank you card stuck to the plastic, from a woman whose surgery had gone well. It had been left for him at the front desk a while ago and he'd never gotten around to trying it.

He tore the packaging and dropped one of the tea bags into a mug.

While he waited, he toed off his Converse trainers and shoved them under the desk.

A few minutes later, he was sipping the strong, bitter tea and second guessing his choice. It was nicely boxed, but not his taste at all. He finished it anyway because it was ready, checked his email, then made sure his door was locked before collapsing on the couch. The Wonder Woman pillow was surprisingly soft.

He drifted off.

Dev woke two hours later with a dry, burning mouth and an aching stomach.

He muttered to himself that he was getting too old if an extra shift wore him down so much he felt ill. He dragged the blanket he'd sloppily thrown out up over his face and sighed. The sigh was tight, his lungs refusing to expand, and a vague sense of panic was creeping through him— the distinct feeling that something was wrong, that he was too slow to wake, had him tugging the blanket off him and tossing it to the side. He staggered to his feet, the vague panic sharpening into something profound, and stumbled once on the way to his desk.

The desk lamp seemed much brighter than it ought to have been, when he switched it on. He fumbled around for his phone and squinted at the blurring screen. The emergency texts he had been so certain would be there were not, and the time stamp on the screen shimmered. He rubbed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He hadn’t felt like a migraine was coming on, but he wasn’t especially looking forward to the idea of dealing with one during a cave emergency.

Except, despite the pounding of his heart, there was no emergency message. No missed call. No alert that roused him from sleep, nothing to explain that what he could see around the phone in the glow from the lamp was out of focus. His chest felt like someone had wrapped it in rubber bands.

It had been a while since he’d had a panic attack truly out of nowhere, but he’d had enough to recognize it now that he was awake enough. He stumbled back to the couch and sat down on the edge of it, trying to pace his breathing. He couldn’t catch more than a shallow breath, even concentrating. The edges of his vision were bleeding black and he fought it back until his mind was screaming, but he stayed conscious.

The stinging in his mouth was getting worse, and so was the dense weight in his gut. He tried to ignore it because he really wanted to just calm down and sleep, but a second after that he was scrambling across the office floor and into the small loo.

He leaned over the toilet and surrendered everything he'd eaten in the past twelve hours. The tea, a protein bar, a bag of crisps from a nurse's station. His tense and rebellious stomach kept seizing until he was dry heaving nothing but gulps of sour air. When he thought it safe enough, he shoved backward with shaking hands.

The burning sensation in his mouth remained, stronger than any taste. The room swam around him and his heartbeat pounded in his ears like jackhammer. His chest was tight and it was hard to breathe— throwing up had made everything worse, not better. His stomach still ached.

Dev’s mouth felt like he’d chewed on stinging nettles and somewhere in the cloudy, mindless terror swirling around, he registered that this was never a thing he’d experienced with any panic attack. Even from before he’d known what to call them, they’d not been like this, and they’d often come on the heels of some other unpleasant thing. This was something different.

He slumped back against the wall, letting his aching head thud there, and closed his eyes against the glaring, fractaling light. Again, he tried to breathe, and he wondered if he was having a myocardial infarction. That seemed like something he should get help for. His pulse was still racing, when he pressed two fingers to his neck. He tried timing it and gave up his second failed attempt getting to just a count of ten, and belatedly realized he hadn’t even been looking at a watch.

The phone on his desk rang.

It rang, and rang, and rang, a gnat darting around his ears and crawling over skin and buzzing inside his skull. He braced against the wall while standing and stopped, while hunched over, to twist and vomit more. He nearly missed the porcelain bowl, it hit him so fast, and still the phone was ringing.

He barely remembered making it to his desk and picking up the handset, but somehow he made it.

There was nothing but the dial tone. He dropped the phone down and stared at the empty tea mug. It blurred in his vision, along with everything around it, into a glistening mess of color and piercing spears of light. The desk tipped sideways and he went with it.

His mouth burned.

"Shite," he gasped, from the floor. The desk, still upright, wavered in front of him. He fumbled with the desk drawer handle and jerked it open and ransacked the inside until his hand closed around a tea box. He tried standing again and ended up leaning on the desk surface for balance, while the room spun.

Behind him, through the closed door, he could hear Leena playing. She was kicking a football against the wall again and again, shouting at him to put his book down.

His mobile lit up when he grabbed it and he tried twice to hit the right place on the screen, and twice pulled up email instead, and gave up with a growl of frustration that was almost a sob. It caught in his chest with scattered shallow breaths and he swore. The third try, he managed contacts, and tapped the first name on the list.

It rang, and rang, and then there was a voice.

“Hello, Kiran? Is everything alright?”

Dev opened his mouth and nothing came out. Maybe, if he stood, he’d have more luck catching his breath. He straightened and it felt like someone had hit him across the back of the shoulders with a plank of wood. He was on the floor again when he pressed the mobile tight to his ear, trying desperately to say, “Alfie, I need help.”

Before he could, his da’s voice came over the line. The harsh, clipped tones demanded, “Stand up.”

“I can’t,” he mumbled, blinking back burning tears. If he cried, that’d make it worse. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

There were noises on the other end, while his hand trembled around the mobile. Someone saying his name, someone shouting, a door slamming. He flinched and dropped the mobile onto the floor and put his head beside it on the low pile carpet. There was no air in the room and whatever happened next was going to be bad, and it was his fault.

The tea box, still in his other hand, crumpled in his grip.

* * *

The window shattered when his boot made contact, the impact sending a spray of glass into the interior of the office. He followed, the cape curled around him to protect from shards of glass, and he hit the ground in a tight roll. The room was poorly lit and at first looked unoccupied-- the bathroom door was open, but the small interior was bare of any human form. The couch had depressions in the cushions from a body lying there recently, a dip in one decorative pillow from a head. The desk chair was spun away from the door, a few feet from the desk.

Batman took all this in within a second of rising to stand, some of it gathered in the process of rising. It was the next second he saw the socked feet, a body prone behind the desk and shielded from view. He swore under his breath and ignored Alfred's single demand for an update. The comm fell silent after that.

"Dev," he said, vaulting over the desk rather than going around it. He crouched beside the fallen body and ripped off a gauntlet to feel for a pulse, his own heart skipping wildly over a handful of beats. Dev was a gray pale in the lamplight, his lips faintly blue, but he had a pulse. It was racing, but it was there. He patted Dev's cheek and glanced around, hunting for more information.

The fallen phone. The box of tea in on hand. A quick survey of the desk, a reach of a gloved hand, told him the mug there had been full and then emptied, dredges of tea leaves in the film at the bottom. He doubted Dev had been in the process of making tea, if he'd sounded as upset as Alfred said.

"Dev. Wake up. Can you open your eyes?"

The skin beneath his fingers was flushed, overwarm despite the cool pallor, and he frowned at not getting any response. There was a roiling dread building in his stomach that he didn't have time to deal with, so he ignored the way it was clawing up his throat and focused.

"Dev. Kiran. Can you hear me?"

A low mumbling moan was his only response, but it was something.

"Sir, what is his condition?" Alfred said, the words snapped and more than a little impatient. That meant he'd probably asked more than once already and Bruce had tuned it out.

"Unconscious," Bruce said. "Minimally responsive. Labored breathing, rapid pulse, fever."

"Signs of attack?"

Bruce checked the door again. It was closed, locked by the look of it, with no signs of forced entry or a fight. He looked at the tea box again.

"What did he say to you?" Bruce asked, patting Dev's bearded cheek again in hopes that his eyes would flutter open. Just a few seconds of eye contact, even hazy, would be a good sign.

"He said he couldn't do something. He apologized," Alfred said, his voice thin. "I am not entirely certain he was aware he was speaking to myself, sir. He was in obvious distress."

"I think he's been poisoned. C'mon, Dev," Bruce said, again. listening carefully to the breathing pattern that was getting more and more alarming. That dread in his gut was growing denser, and for a split second he was on a desert dune holding a boy who wasn't breathing, and then he was back in the painted office. "Dev. Wake up. Dev, please, open your eyes, please, look at me. Kiran, sweetheart, you need to breathe."

He was distantly aware that he was sliding from calm to frantic, and Alfred's voice sliced through what was turning into a pleading litany.

"Sir. What is the next step? Focus. Tell me what to prepare."

Bruce sucked in air through his teeth and pressed back against the disordered desperation. He managed to sound calm and even when he spoke again, his hand still alongside Dev's face. "I'm going to get help here. I don't know if he'll make it back to the cave."

"Noted, sir. I will leave at once."

The comm silenced again and Bruce pulled his gauntlet back on, slid an arm under knees and shoulders, and lifted. Dev was too light, he always was, even when completely slack. Now, he was rigid in a way Bruce didn't like at all, and it was muscle memory that kept him moving forward and acting. Training took over when his brain wanted to stop, because this was too much like things Bruce tried very, very hard not to think about, and the man in his arms wasn't a son but he wasn't a stranger, either.

He twisted his wrist around to pull the door open and stepped out into the fluorescent-lit hallway, quiet in the small dawn hours. It was offices here, but if he got to an area with staff that would be enough. The cape and cowl had the benefit of immediate impact. He traced steps to the ER anyway, and was still three staff hallways away when someone spotted him.

There was a benefit to his reputation for silence, and that meant nobody bustling around him and grabbing a gurney from a nearby hall knew that he'd stalled nearly completely. He had the absurd impulse to refuse to hand Dev over, a flicker of protest at surrendering him to anyone who wasn't Alfred, in the cave, with their own equipment. Nobody expected him to say much, which was just as well, because his mouth was too dry and his throat too tight.

He couldn't claim any kind of relationship, in the few seconds it took for a nurse and orderly to take over, because he'd been in the cave updating files and unable to sleep, when Alfred had called down through the intercom and told him _Go now, there's something wrong. Kiran's office._ He'd simply pulled the cowl back on and sprinted for the car.

"Poison," he rasped, when the nurse asked him if he knew anything. Nobody ever expected him to sound quite human, so she didn't startle at the harsh tone. He handed her the box of tea, after slipping a bag out to tuck into his belt.

"Name?" she asked, and he was so stunned and struggling-- sand in his boots, in his gloves, under his nails, blood under his nails, a warehouse with dripping pipes, a distant explosion that rocked across the bay-- that he nearly answered _Batman_ in a stupor. He blinked, thankful for the cowl lenses, and hauled himself back to fully present just as the orderly spoke.

"Isn't this Dr. Dev? He's one of the surgeons here."

"Yes," Bruce said, feeling like that description fell short, if in fact accurate. “Devabhaktuni.”

They were moving away, already, Dev on the gurney. Clearly, the nurse didn't expect much more information from him. When he carried people into emergency departments, he was not the sort of person that usually had a host of family or personal medical details. He knew now those stories traveled-- _Batman walked into my ER tonight_\-- from hospital to hospital, from staff to staff.

He wanted to tell them _he's type B+ blood, he's not allergic to anything, he doesn't like oxygen masks_ but he said nothing. The relevant information would be in a file, and they had a name. It didn't matter enough to outweigh the risk of someone connecting them.

He willed Dev's eyes to open, he willed him to make any kind of movement. An arm flung up, Dev struggling to sit, Dev grumbling, "Oh, bloody hell, sod off, then." There was nothing but stillness, and then doors swinging closed on their automatic motors, and Bruce standing in a hallway alone.

Batman turned on his heel and headed for the roof.

* * *

The first thing he was aware of was that his throat hurt. It ached, a dull burn that he knew instinctively wasn't allergies. Before he opened his eyes, he wondered if he was getting sick, or if he was just overtired. He tried opening his eyes. They were alarmingly heavy, and the room that swam into view was not his own but the white ceiling and corded IV pole of a hospital room. There was a faint beeping in the background and something covering his mouth, someone holding a hand over his mouth so hard that part of the hand pressed up against his nose. He didn’t want to struggle, but he couldn’t breathe, so his fingers scrambled to pull at his face, and before he felt the smack of his ear being boxed there was a quiet voice close by. A warm hand took his, and held it.

“It’s alright, Kiran. It’s just the oxygen. You’re in a room at Gotham Memorial.”

“Bloody fuck,” Dev mumbled, fighting the urge to tear the mask off anyway. He could feel the rubber edges pressing into his skin. “What.”

“You were poisoned,” Alfred said, when Dev turned his head to look at him. He felt weirdly light and empty, like his skull might float away. Alfred hadn’t let go of his hand. “You’ve been conscious here and there, but not very lucid. Do you remember anything?”

Dev swallowed, the raw dryness in his throat making him wince. Before he could speak again, or voice a request, there was a bumpy plastic straw at his lips. Alfred held the cup and Dev drank water faster than he knew was wise, but he didn’t care. The iciness was a welcome relief.

“I was intubated,” Dev guessed. He pulled an elbow back and propped himself up and tried to sit, but his muscles were refusing to cooperate. Iron coated every inch of him, not hot, but heavy. Alfred stood and raised the head of the bed with a button, and then sat back down.

“Yes,” Alfred said. His fingers tightened just a fraction around Dev’s hand.

Dev closed his eyes and thought, and he couldn’t manage a coherent picture in his head of anything that would have put him in a hospital bed. The last thing he remembered was doing a surgery, and...and…

He reached up and pulled the mask off and let it fall to the sheets.

“I’m alright,” he said, when Alfred’s eyebrow arched up and he looked likely to protest. “I can sodding breathe well enough. I remember making tea.”

He remembered his da shouting at him, the office flooded, something slimy and tentacled slithering around the room hunting while he was on the floor. There was a scrap of wild applause.

Then, something after. Flashes of a hospital room, of equipment, of the pinch of an IV, of gagging on air. There was a wisp of Tim sitting beside the bed, where Alfred was sitting, his head bent against Bruce where he stood. That felt like a fragment of dream.

“I remember bits,” he admitted. “Nothing much.”

“You rang me. It’s fortunate that you did. It was nearly too late when Batman arrived. The toxin was acting quickly. It was the tea, by the by—” Alfred paused, a strange look on his normally placid face, and he shifted his gaze to the floor. When he raised his eyes again, his calm expression was firmly back in place. “I think Master Bruce would be best suited to tell you the details, if you wish to hear them.”

“Batman,” Dev echoed. “When Batman bloody...when he…”

“I’m afraid he broke your office window. I’ve been told he’s usually decent about replacing that sort of thing.”

“Shite,” Dev said, feeling what little energy he’d gathered go out of him. “He...he…”

“Yes,” Alfred said, a touch of steel in the tone. “Of course he did, my boy.”

“Oh,” Dev said quietly. His throat ached. His hand, the one not grasped in Alfred’s, thumbed at the hem of the bleach white sheet. “How long’s it been?”

Alfred checked his wristwatch. “It’s half past seven now, so nearly fifteen hours since he found you. I ought to warn you the others will be returning soon. Master Bruce took them down to the cafeteria, on my recommendation, but they’ll no doubt wish to stop in before visiting hours end at eight.”

Others.

Dev blinked. He felt like he could fall asleep again on the spot. If he could roll over, curl around his sore stomach, and tug a blanket up to his ears he could sleep again. Maybe Tim hadn’t been a dream.

“Others,” Dev echoed, looking around the room. It was larger than he expected it would be, and now that he was paying attention there were bits of life scattered all around. Tim’s messenger bag was leaning against chair legs, there was a sketchbook on the window sill. A tangled pair of ear buds was on the wheeled bedside table. A few abandoned disposable cups were at various spots.

“They’ve been here most of the day,” Alfred said. “They’ll clean up a bit, I daresay, before leaving for the night.”

Dev was staring at the messenger bag and his face was very dry and hot. He knew how to not cry, but that did little to chase away the miserable tightness of holding it back. There was a flicker of anger at the idea they’d given up their day for this, but it was quickly swallowed by something like startled joy.

The idea that they were coming _back_, any moment, while he could barely sit up, was also equal parts relief and overwhelming. Burying himself beneath a blanket and even feigning sleep was sounding more and more appealing, so he could listen to familiar chatter around him without having to maintain anything. It also, unfortunately, made him feel like a complete and total arse.

He closed his eyes anyway, when he leaned back against the pillow. His mouth was dry again but no longer stinging. He remembered that part, too.

“I’ll chase them away, Kiran,” Alfred said gently. “They won’t overstay their welcome, but they will be glad to see you awake. You gave us quite a fright.”

“They don’t have to…” Dev started. He tried again. “I don’t bloody want them to be chased off. I don’t think I do, rather.”

Alfred patted his hand and clasped it between both of his own. “They are rather fond of you. We all are. They aren’t the only ones relieved to see improvement. But you need rest and they can properly terrorize you at home.”

Home.

Dev nodded, and gestured limply for water. He was thirsty but it made a nice distraction, as well.

He didn’t hear the Waynes coming until there was a soft knock on the door, and Alfred answered after a look at him, and it was pushed open and a small crowd poured into the room. They were quiet, eerily quiet for a group that size, until they saw him.

The hospital silence morphed into so many voices at once that Dev couldn’t separate all of the sounds into actual words. He let it wash over him in a warm buzz, the smile he thought he’d have to force past the exhaustion and stress coming easily. Then, Tim snaked his way around Jason and Bruce and Dev had just enough time to register the stricken look on his face before there were arms thrown around him holding tight.

Tim was leaning over the sloped bed, his forehead pressed against Dev’s shoulder with his arms locked in place, and it took Dev longer than it should have to raise his own arms and hug him back. He patted the space between Tim’s narrow shoulders twice and then cradled the back of his head in place when Tim made no move to let go.

“Hullo,” he said, when Tim still hadn’t moved a moment later.

“Shut up,” Tim choked, his voice muffled. “Just. Don’t. I’m okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mate,” Dev said, glancing helplessly at Alfred. Alfred was pointedly looking elsewhere while everyone talked, speaking to Bruce, and Dev took a breath and thumbed a circle under Tim’s hair. It was softer than the scratchy hospital sheet. “I bloody swear.”

Tim sagged a little like a string had been cut and he nodded. His whisper was soft and deep, like wind through dry corn stalks at the Kent farm, but close enough to Dev’s ear that he heard every word clearly. “Alfred’s going to invite you to stay at the manor for a couple days and I’m going to literally shadow you everywhere if you tell him no.”

“Sodding hell, Timothy,” Dev whispered back. “I’m alright. I’ll not tell him no, then.”

It was only then that Tim let go, moving back with a ducked head and a sniff. He dragged an arm across his face while backstepping toward his bag, and the next ten minutes flew by. Dev let the noise drift over and around him and joined the conversation when he could, but they didn’t unleash a barrage of questions on him. Damian edged closer and closer until Dev reached behind Stephanie, perched on the edge of the bed, and ruffled Damian’s hair while watching Jason’s face. Damian jerked away just slightly, but looked less furious after, so Dev counted the twinge in his arm at the effort worth it. Jason argued with Steph, his low, coarse laughter at her exclamation a low rug of sound in the now-noisy room. Dev’s attention flicked from one person to another so that by the time Alfred reminded them it was past visiting hours, Dev was so shattered he could barely keep his eyes open.

Then, the room was empty save for himself and Bruce.

“They allow an overnight visitor,” Bruce said, when Dev struggled to focus and ask. “Alfred offered. It’s not too late to catch him in the hall, but I thought he could use the rest at home.”

“S’fine,” Dev managed. “S’you.”

“Get some rest, Dev,” Bruce said, taking a seat. “We can leave tomorrow. Alfred will have your room ready, if you want it.”

Dev wanted to say _thank you_, to admit how much he’d wanted to be left alone and how very little he’d been looking forward to it. But all he could get out was a huffed, “Don’t sodding tell me what to do.”

Based on the smirk on Bruce’s face, the little slant that was just one corner of his mouth, this sentence had been markedly less clear than he’d intended.

He gave up and fell asleep.

He woke in the dark when the nurse was checking vitals and stayed awake long after she’d left the room again. He watched Bruce, stretched out in an armchair, slowly relax and drift off again. Dev had missed him jolting awake when the nurse came in, but he was certain it had happened. He couldn’t sleep again easily, and stayed up studying the room, and Bruce, and the murky sky outside the window.

When Dev had been in uni, the closest he’d ever gotten to ringing home for his mum was the time he got pneumonia. His flatmate, Thom, had only the thinnest pretense of living with him anymore, and there was no telling when he’d be back from his boyfriend’s flat for something. Dev had curled up on the bathroom floor with a towel for a pillow and spent a shivering, dehydrated, breathless hour convinced he was dying while the shower ran the hottest water. He almost rang her, to apologize for leaving and not visiting even on holiday, to ask her to tell Leena that he missed her whenever she resurfaced, from wherever the hell she was anymore. It was always somewhere far off, with her own boyfriend, and a life that seemed to sprint ahead while Dev plodded behind in England. Of all the things he missed about home, Leena was nearly the sum of them, and somehow he’d blinked and she’d slipped away to other things. Their fraying connection was calling card minutes with a long distance delay, the receiver held tight to his ear. _Come home_, was the thing he always wanted to ask her, and never could, because what was that anymore? Even his flat felt temporary.

In the end, he hadn’t rung his mum, because they’d only had the landline and he was a coward who was bloody terrified of his da answering the phone. He could hear the cold snap of his voice if Dev wheezed over the line, and even “I think I’m dying,” wouldn’t have changed that. If she had answered, Dev was more terrified, maybe, of hearing her say she couldn’t come, couldn’t risk upsetting his da, than he was of not knowing at all. He’d dragged himself to his feet and turned the shower off and pulled a jumper on to hail a cab to the nearest ED.

There were two days he spent in a hospital ward alone, surrounded by staff and other patients, too miserable to be fully awake and too sick to think to let anyone else know. He’d gone to his flat when they discharged him and gotten into a horrific shouting match with Thom over disappearing, though they hardly ever fought, and he’d slammed the door and walked the streets with aching, trembling legs. He was strangely ashamed of the truth, that he’d been ill, and he apologized to Thom without ever explaining, and something between them had never quite thawed all the way again. Dev was lonely, but he was also razor wire to anyone who tried to climb his walls, and he knew it.

He had been young, and bloody mental, and too sodding blind to stop himself from desperately flinging people away from him. He’d done it over and over, telling himself he was more comfortable knowing they wouldn’t stick around than starting to hope that they might only to be disappointed. Working in the States had ground him down to dust, and he’d been a hollow shell trying to find ways to break that pattern of burning through casual acquaintances. Something about the Waynes had done it, after all that time, and he was just honest enough to acknowledge the sheer selfishness of using their need for a doctor as the leverage that helped him climb from that rut. He had less reason to push them away if they needed him, until he’d found he’d accidentally begun needing them in return.

There was that buried, bedrock-deep fear that they, too, wouldn’t come, the question he couldn’t bring himself to ask, the position he tried never to put people in so he’d never had to face the crushing blow of the truth.

And, like so many things they did, they didn’t trample over it. They slipped around it silently, and were there before he could lose too much time wondering if he could handle the answer. The answer was apparently Batman breaking windows to get to him, and a roomful of people waiting for him to wake up, and a best mate crying on his shoulder that he nearly hadn’t, and a man something like a brother to him in a chair beside the bed.

The answer was a man, who was the closest thing Dev had ever had to the sort of father he wanted, holding his hand, and telling him it would be alright. Dev sometimes wondered if he’d ever stop being a coward long enough to tell Alfred how he felt, without the cover of a joke or some other pretense. Maybe someday.

He yawned and shifted on the bed and then tried sitting up. He wasn’t dizzy, and other than pervasive exhaustion felt alright. He still wasn’t sleepy. He checked the IV drip to see what they had him on, and then attempted standing. The idea that he’d been poisoned felt distant and surreal, like something that had happened to someone else, a kind of mistake. Dev suspected it would settle in later.

There was a mess of various tubing still anchoring him to the bed, and he didn’t have the energy to pick through it and decide what to unattach on his own, but standing for a moment he could do. Or, he could do it until he couldn’t. He thought he’d have time to sit back down, but his knees gave out so suddenly he would have smacked his chin on the linoleum and cracked it open if it hadn’t been for Bruce. One second, Dev thought he was asleep, the next, Bruce was on his feet and catching him by the arms. He braced him beneath his elbows, and Dev exhaled a breath he’d been holding.

“Steady,” Bruce murmured. “I’ve got you. Stand up. You’re alright. Stand up, and then go from there.”

Dev wanted, already, to lie back down. He felt like a sodding idiot. But his tongue froze, and that echo, the _stand up, stand up, stand up_ refrain slammed into him like a runaway locomotive. _Stand up straight, stand up straighter, don’t slouch like that when I’m speaking to you, what kind of spine is that, what kind of man are you, stand up, stop throwing yourself around like that, stand up._

He was angry, Dev had made him angry, and now he was making it worse. He tried squaring his shoulders but he couldn’t move, and he could hardly breathe, and that wasn’t good because flinching was another way to make it worse. If there was anything his da hated more than a boy who wouldn’t brace himself like a man, it was a boy who looked afraid.

There was no way he’d be able to keep it up for more than a few seconds.

He didn’t topple over but there was something chilled beneath him. He heard his own ragged breathing, which would have made everything worse, except over the gasping he could hear a calm, steady voice.

“Shh, Dev. You’re safe. You’re safe, I’m right here. Nothing’s going to get through me.”

Dev swallowed so hard it hurt, it would have hurt even if his throat hadn’t already been sore. One of his hands was flat against the linoleum floor where he was sitting and the other buried in Bruce’s shirt. He sank all his attention for a moment into the cold of that floor, and then the silky fabric in his other fist. He could hear himself still hyperventilating and felt blackness creeping in at the edges.

“Poisoned,” he choked out. “Someone...sodding...poisoned…”

“Breathe,” Bruce said. He was crouched in front of him. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. Breathe.”

“I can’t stand up,” Dev said, closing his eyes. The pressure in his chest worked through the attempts at talking, the helpless wheezing, and cracked through him in a sob. The cold floor was rapidly fading in usefulness. “He’s...he’s...I can’t…”

The fabric in his grip pulled away and his hand fell, shaking too hard to hold on. His small noise of protest was too tiny to make a difference. Then, he felt rather than heard or saw Bruce move. There was an arm around his shoulders, tugging him close to a body beside him, and he could smell the laundry detergent Alfred used, and the faded tang of batsuit sweat like a metallic mark of the cave. He’d hosed that suit down, helping clean up after a long night, more than once.

“Give me any sign, a single word, and I let go. Breathe with me,” Bruce said, when Dev was pressed against him and folded under his arm. The shaking was letting up and he didn’t move a muscle on his own to push Bruce away. He paced his inhalations to the rhythm of Bruce’s chest rising and falling and it got easier with every single one.

“Sorry,” Dev mumbled, when he was aware enough to know he’d somehow ended up on the floor. If he’d felt exhausted before, this was a whole new kind of weakness, the kind where it felt like someone had sliced through his muscles and left him a useless puppet of bones.

“Shh,” Bruce said. Dev felt a kiss buried in his hair and he tried to choke down a pathetic little cry. He didn’t entirely succeed. “Sweetheart,” Bruce said, his voice oddly thin. “It’s alright. You’re safe.”

“Sodding fuck,” Dev hissed, one hand pressed to his eyes. “Shite. _Shite._ It was the fucking tea.”

“It was,” Bruce said, now tinged with harsh granite. “There was atropa belladonna in the tea bags. Enough to kill you. I’m going to find who actually sent it under your patient’s name, and then they’re never going to see sunlight again outside of a prison.”

“I’m bloody sorry,” Dev repeated. “I shouldn’t have...there was a way to check...I didn’t think but I sodding should have…”

“Dev,” Bruce interrupted the trailing phrases, with such a gentle voice that Dev stopped. His hand was rubbing up and down on Dev’s arm, a grounding sort of motion. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” Dev said, trying to believe it. It would be easier to get there knowing that Bruce did. That was almost enough. He thought he should try to get up again but he honestly, deeply didn’t want to move. Now that he had the oxygen for it, a small sigh escaped him, and Bruce’s scarred and knotted fingers tangled in his hair and stayed there.

They sat there for a long time, and then before he could stop himself, he was crying, as silently as he ever had but crying all the same. He pressed his eyes and scrubbed at the tears with the base of his palm. Bruce slid away and used his thumb to wipe a stray tear away before it snaked down into Dev’s beard.

“I’m okay.” Dev sniffed.

“Come on. Off the floor.”

It was a solid grip that pulled him to his feet and Dev curled up on the bed with boneless fatigue. There was a scrape of chair legs as Bruce dragged his chair closer and sat down with his own haggard slump.

“You need to sodding sleep,” Dev said, frowning slightly.

Bruce stared at him for a second and then laughed, a sound Tim had one described as a dog having a coughing fit, and he wasn’t far off the mark. It was a wonderful sound, and pissed Dev off to no end.

“What,” he said, when Bruce exhaled and set his forehead on the edge of the hospital bed. “You bloody do. I’ve not stopped being right just because I nearly died.”

He said it that way to see how it felt in his mouth, a thing that had been true more than once. The shape of it felt odd, not fully real yet, but it didn’t feel like a lie, either. Beside him, Bruce stiffened but didn’t sit up.

“You did almost die,” he said, very, very quietly. “And I wasn’t there. You should have been downstairs, at the manor. It shouldn’t have gotten that bad. I should have gotten here sooner.”

Dev combed through Bruce’s hair. There was a part on the back still slightly matted from the cowl, which meant he’d not stopped to wash it out earlier. Dev worked through it, tugging gently, until it untangled.

“I’m alright, Wayne. However bad it was. I’m alright now. You got here in time.”

“After tonight, Alfred isn’t going to let you out of his sight for a month,” Bruce grumbled. He hummed, a tired noise, and fell quiet again. Dev kept combing through his hair, black hair over his brown fingers. Bruce’s breath caught, for a second, and then evened out. “You can’t do that,” he said, serious and soft. “I’ll let you order me around for my own good, but you can’t make me explain to my family that you’re gone. I won’t do that.”

“That isn’t…” Dev let the reason slip away and, for a second, scrubbed a knuckle against Bruce’s scalp. There was an irritated huff and nothing more. He thought about Tim and the death grip hug, about Alfred’s hand tight on his own, and tried to comprehend the fact that he mattered to them at all. He left it to examine another time. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll stick around. Alfie’s tea is the only kind I’m drinking from now on.”

“Good,” Bruce said.

“Go to sleep, Wayne,” Dev said, stifling a yawn. “You’ve just said you follow orders, so bloody prove it, darling.”

“Ass,” Bruce grunted. “You sleep. You need it.”

What Dev wanted to say was, _I’ll sodding sleep if I want to, then,_ but he was too far gone to manage anything more than just a _hm_. When his fingers stopped working through Bruce’s hair, Bruce’s hand moved up and covered Dev’s, and held it in place.

That was the last thing he remembered until morning, the feeling of being held down and anchored to something safe, and when he woke his hand had moved but the feeling hadn’t left.

**Author's Note:**

> _In the cell that holds my body back, the door swings wide_   
_And I feel like someone's lost child as the guards lead me outside_   
_And if the clouds are gathering, it's just to point the way_   
_To an afternoon I spent with you when it rained all day_
> 
> _And someone leads the beast in on his chain_  
_But I know you're thinking of me cause it's just about to rain_  
_So I won't be afraid of anything ever again_


End file.
